[from the Province of Constructive Disillusionment]

Tag Archives: attachment

I fight against the rhythm of the cabin, striving to fall out of time, but the hypnotic pull of the three others snoring around me kept drawing me back into synchrony. I couldn’t blot out my awareness of the tempo, and intentionally breathing out when they breathe in proved to be just as bad.

Not for or against, but regardless; not alliance or rebellion, but true individuality: that has always been the aim, I have felt. To beat to the rhythm of your own goddamn drum.

This is a rather extreme microcosmic example, but that only shows how deep this battle truly rages in me, and its history stretches far behind the present, far beyond this male-bonding weekend of kayaking, a cabin, of booze and weed.

With ease I remembered when I would lie beside my mother in bed when I was younger. I would always try resisting the hypnotic pull of synchronizing my breathing with my mother’s breathing, her heartbeat with my own.

Earlier in the day the four of us were playing a game of corn-hole in the playground just across from the cabin, and I’m not usually one for games and being high did not help, I’m sure. As soon as I was supposed to not toss the bean bag in the opponents hole, I became a god of the nothing-but-net corn-hole equivalent.

“I don’t know why it is,” said John in the midst if it all, “but every time someone tries not to make the hole, they always end up getting it in the hole.”

What you resist, persists. Both craving and aversion constitute absorption. Both constitute the psychological zoom in. The goal is no neither try to or try not to.

There she stands, forehead tipped forward, dyed-red hair dangling so naturally, so perfectly over her beatiful face and vibrant eyes so fucking seductively she cannot be real, and yet she clearly is. Like every transient fixation I develop, she becomes alpha and omega, beginning and end, life and death of my evidently ever-bound heart and gonads.

I want her for I have been foolish enough to remember how great it can be in the beginning when I have so rarely succumb to it, though the ending flashes before my tainted, jaded inner eye at the same time.

The higher you climb, the harder you fall into this hormonally-driven form of temporary insanity, and it takes you so long to heal. Remember now? Best to play it safe and play it wise, to give up on those games and just stay low to the ground.

Already you can see your resistance wavering. Feeling jealous, possessive, but she is no object and you don’t own her. What would happen if she stole your breath away, if you fell head over heels again just to get it back by breathing her in?

You’re just wasting time in oscillation. Shit or get off the pot. It seems you’re just goofy-glued to the toilet seat shooting machine-gun blanks that just serve to ripple the water, teasing her fluid skin. Her aggravation grows. Your ineptness persists. One minute a stone wall, the next a pushover. You are the king of incongruence; master of mixed messages.